In traditional oriental medicine including Chinese herbal medicine, there are four basic diagnostic procedures (examinations) used in diagnosing a disease; namely, inspection that observes a patient with eye, listening and smelling examination that hearing voice of the patient, inquiry that asks the patient questions, and palpation that directly touches the patient. The above diagnostic methods are all subjective methods of diagnosing patients based on information on patients acquired through the five physical senses of the palpation examiner, and prescribing appropriate Chinese herbal medicine according to the age and the physical constitution of the patients. Hence, the palpation examiner may need to have vast knowledge and sophisticated skills.
Of these diagnostic methods, diagnostic results obtained by palpation largely rely on a palpation examiner because the palpation examiner obtains biological information of patients by directly touching the patients. A related art technology proposes quantifying the information obtained by the palpation; that is, quantifying the reactive force, namely, abdominal strength, obtained by pressing the abdominal surface of the patient during the palpation of an abdominal part (abdominal examination).
However, the related art technology merely quantifies abdominal strength detected by the palpation (abdominal examination), but may fail to indicate positions of the abdominal part associated with the quantified abdominal strength. That is, the above-described related art technology may fail to relate the process of palpation and detected numerical values. As a result, the diagnostic result of the palpation still remains dependent upon the skills of the palpation examiner.